“Same again, Max?”
The question was as redundant as it was expected. If Sam, the bartender, had asked once, he’d asked five times in the last hour. I’d sure become that predictable. A cursory nod in place of a gruff “yes” proposed a welcome alternative, ensuring my chain-smoking wasn’t affected. I was well-stocked with cigarettes, and wasn’t going anywhere.
‘Connected’ by Stereo MCs piped out of the well-worn speakers in the dive bar I’d been existing in for the past week. The irony of the song’s title wasn’t wasted on me. The only thing I’d connected with in the past five years was a glass bottle or a large tumbler. A connection to reality got as far as playing Pong in my head, without a ball. A connection to anything else was looking unlikely, each day more than the last. I was in my own dreary-eyed bubble, and nobody was bursting it any time soon.
I was almost knocked out of my stupor by the sudden accompaniment of a woman gingerly placing herself on the stool immediately beside me. Her perfume overwhelming but pleasing amidst the pungent cloud of smoke and stench of stale beer. I didn’t move my head – such an action would lose my battle to focus on the reflection directly ahead in the large mirror dominating a clean, varnished bar. What gazed back was a shell of a man: all seven-day shadow, crumpled, dark brown leather jacket and grimace. I was Columbo meets Keith Richards, and this Stone wasn’t so much rolling as falling, gathering momentum, tumbling down a chasm, yet to reach terminal velocity, long-since reaching a tragic terminal boredom. That, I guess, I could connect to.
“Same again, Max?”, a voice enquired. Either Sam had just had a pretty hasty sex change, or the woman next to me had offered me a drink, and not only knew my name, but what I wanted. And by the patronising tone of her voice, maybe even why.
“Sure”, I replied, my gaze still struggling on one of the images in front. One… three… two… there were a few Maxes staring back at me. Another whisky wasn’t going to change this. She gestured toward Sam, then me, the whole exchange wordless and effortless.
“What keeps you alive, Max?”, she asked. Now my suspicion had become too much and I had to turn to her. A few blinks and I was able to muster some sort of focus. She was in her late fifties, dressed impeccably in a jet black dress and matching gloves. “How do you know me?”, I growled. “We all know you, Max”, she responded. This time, her tone was deadly serious.
“I’ve been following your exploits for quite some time now, Mr. Payne”. She gestured, the same way she did for the drink, to her chest. Then began to slowly tap her finger. I turned my gaze to my chest and scattering nervously was a little red dot. I’d seen enough laser sights in my years on the force to gather this wasn’t some trinket you pulled out of a Christmas cracker. This was the real deal. Instinctively, I squinted and scanned across the line of the beam. It ended at an inconspicuous man leaning against the fire exit at the end of the bar, a long black trench coat draped over his right arm.
Forget black coffee, there’s something about a gun pointing at you that starts to sober you up. Real quick…
dantandy 